In an effort to protect itself against future U.S. sanctions, and to distance itself from the dollar, Russia wants to cut its $45 billion dollar holdings in its $125 billion sovereign wealth fund.
Vladimir Kolychev, Russia’s deputy finance minister, said they are “looking at different reserve currencies that meet IMF standards, including the yuan and those of other countries.”
After the U.S. sanctioned Russia in spring 2018, which caused the ruble to drop by 20 percent against the dollar, the central bank of Russia slashed its treasury debt from $96 billion to $8 billion in only a year and a half.
Russia reduced its total dollar reserves to 22 percent of the $542.9 billion total, pushing the euro up to 32 percent from 22 percent and the renminbi to almost 15 percent from 5 percent.
TREND FORECAST: Trends are born, they grow, reach old age, and die. The dollar, the world’s currency, is at an old age, and the movement to replace it has been born.
As reported by Société Générale, a French investment bank and financial services company, based on currency weights used by the U.S. Federal Reserve in its trade-weighted dollar index, China’s yuan is the second most traded currency by the U.S., just after the euro. “The emergence of the yuan in trade-weighted currency baskets is redefining the relative importance of the main FX drivers,” its analyst noted.
Moreover, as the U.S. keeps pressuring nations with sanctions, such as Russia, Iran, Venezuela, etc., the movement to trade in their own currencies will steadily weaken dollar dominance.
